Bunny unusual: If you see a cottontail, take a closer look

"Hey, Rick, I caught something I believe you'll be interested in," said my friend Mark Kasper in a tantalizing phone message last week.

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Posted Mar. 17, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Posted Mar. 17, 2013 at 12:01 AM

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"Hey, Rick, I caught something I believe you'll be interested in," said my friend Mark Kasper in a tantalizing phone message last week.

I immediately called Mark back and nonchalantly replied, " It all depends on what it is." Actually, the suspense was driving me insane because Mark is an excellent naturalist and, based upon our similar interests, I knew he had captured something special.

My lackluster response was quickly followed by an emphatic, "I'm on my way up!"

Mark informed me that a pesky skunk has been lingering around his home, so he set a box trap in hopes of catching the odoriferous little fellow. As it turned out, Mark didn't capture the skunk but instead he caught a cottontail rabbit, which was lured into the trap baited with peanut butter.

When Mark told me he had caught a bunny, I knew exactly what the nature of his teasing phone message was.

His home sits on top of Wyoming Mountain along the western edge of Pocono Plateau in Bear Creek Township, Luzerne County. The habitat surrounding Mark's home consists of scrub oak barrens, blueberry thickets and a young forest mixed with maple, cherry and sheep laurel.

"Does it have a defined dark spot?" I asked.

Mark enthused, "Right between the ears!"

His reply didn't pertain to your typical eastern cottontail, but a rare cousin called the Appalachian cottontail. This uncommon rabbit is not often observed up close, so it was a great opportunity to see some of its identifying characteristics.

I packed my camera bag and drove up to Mark's house to see the surprise visitor inside his box trap.

The Appalachian cottontail (Sylvilagus obscurus) is one of three rabbit-like rodents of Pennsylvania. The other two are the ubiquitous eastern cottontail and the uncommon snowshoe hare. All three species are found in specific habitats throughout the Pocono Mountains.

The Appalachian cottontail, hence its common name, is found basically at the high-elevation ridges and plateaus along the Appalachian mountains. In the Poconos, they live in areas of dense scrub oak/heath barrens intermixed with shrubs such as blueberry, sheep-laurel, sweet fern and young stands of maple, birch and oak. The diet of the Appalachian cottontail consists of the bark, twigs and buds of all of these shrubs and trees as well as grasses, forbs and other herbaceous plants.

According to the Pennsylvania Heritage Program, "The range of the Appalachian cottontail occurs at the higher elevations in the Appalachians. The species has a continuous distribution in the Appalachians from southwest of the Hudson River, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky south to Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama."

If you live within the range of the Appalachian cottontail and have the high-elevation scrub oak/heath barrens habitat surrounding your property, look carefully at the next rabbit that visits your backyard. It might not be an ordinary eastern cottontail.

The Appalachian cottontail looks identical to its cousin, the larger eastern cottontail. However, there are ways both superficially and morphologically to differentiate the species.

Literature provided by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources describes several identifying characteristics: "Eastern cottontails have a rusty orange patch at the nape of the neck and often have the appearance of a dark saddle across their backs; the Appalachian cottontail has a reddish nape patch but is more uniformly dark. Live specimens have a very dark iris relative to eastern cottontails. Appalachian cottontails have a diffuse gray cheek patch, lacking in the eastern cottontail. The most reliable characteristic to distinguish Appalachian from eastern cottontails is the presence of a dark patch between the ears in Appalachian cottontails. These differences between the eastern and Appalachian cottontails are so subtle that identification usually requires handling of the animal."

The only other way to positively determine its identity is to study the skull structure. Eastern cottontails and Appalachian cottontails are easily distinguished by skull characteristics.

"The skulls of Appalachian cottontails and eastern cottontails are markedly different when viewed from above. Appalachian cottontails have a jagged and irregular suture line between the frontal and nasal bones, whereas this line is smooth in eastern cottontails. Also, the postorbital process of Appalachian cottontails are thin and just barely join the skull at the posterior end," explains a University of Michigan website.

Unfortunately, this identification would require obtaining a skull of a dead rabbit.

Fortunately for the rabbit, Mark's inadvertent capture provided the perfect opportunity for close inspection. We studied and photographed the little brown fellow in detail as the cottontail demonstrated a dark pelage, reddish nape, diffuse cheek patch and a clearly defined dark patch between its ears. It was definitely an Appalachian cottontail.

Satisfied with our conclusion, we were ready to set it free. We opened the cage, and the rabbit gingerly hopped away into the barrens ... undoubtedly delighted to keep its skull and live to share some "bunny tales" with its kin.

Contact Rick Koval at pocononaturalist@yahoo.com or write to him at PO Box 454, Dallas, PA 18612.